Hume's Enquiry

Expanded and Explained

David Hume, Scott Stapleford, Tyron Goldschmidt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781351380751
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion de l'information

Hume's Enquiry: Expanded and Explained includes the entire classical text of David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in bold font, a running commentary blended seamlessly into the text in regular font, and analytic summaries of each section. The commentary is like a professor on hand to guide the reader through every line of the daunting prose and every move in the intricate argumentation. The unique design helps students learn how to read and engage with one of modern philosophy's most important and exciting classics.

Key Features:

• Includes the entire original text.
• Provides helpful summaries of each paragraph.
• Offers commentary on every line of text.
• Removes the gap between commentary and text.

1 Of the Different Species of Philosophy

Natural philosophy studies material nature; moral philosophy studies human nature. The latter is practiced in two different ways. The first style of doing moral philosophy treats humans primarily as active beings, and attempts to regulate our conduct by cultivating a rhetorically powerful writing style that appeals directly to emotions. The principal aim of this popular approach is edification, or moral improvement.

1. The two great branches of human knowledge are natural philosophy, which investigates bodies, their properties and operations, and moral philosophy, which studies man, his behaviour and his inner mental life. The former branch includes the sciences of physics, astronomy and biology; the latter includes psychology, ethics, politics and anthropology. Moral philosophy, or the science of human nature, as it is also called, is our topic here. Judging from existing works in moral philosophy, it may be done in two distinct ways, or treated after two different manners; each of which has its advantages and peculiar merits, to be sure, and each of which may contribute in its own way to the entertainment, instruction, and, ideally, the reformation of mankind through the improvement of character. The one approach considers man chiefly as a creature born for action; and as influenced in his assessments, or measures, of things by his taste—the faculty for judging beauty and deformity, excellence and inferiority, etc.—and by sentiment—a feeling or emotion, such as desire or disgust, sympathy or antipathy, and that sort of thing; it regards a man as pursuing one object, and avoiding another, according to its apparent desirability or worth, the value which these objects seem to possess, and according to the light in which they present themselves to his mind. I rate reading highly, for instance, because I enjoy it and it strikes me as good; I look at farm work with some apprehension because I dislike it and prefer my rest. Another man sees things differently. By shaping our evaluations, taste and sentiment guide our actions: Lust leads one man into a brothel while shame keeps another man away. Philosophers favouring the popular style study such influences as these, and seek to exploit them. As virtue, of all objects, is allowed to be the most valuable, something esteemed by every man, this action-oriented species of philosophers paint and depict her in the most amiable and pleasing colours; they make virtue attractive through the use of elevated language, charming descriptions and clever literary devices, borrowing all the helps they need from poetry and the principles of eloquence, and treating their subject as a jewel to be polished with rhetoric. Their writing is lucid and attractive, tossed off in an easy and obvious manner, and such as is best fitted to please the imagination, to fire the passions and engage the affections. They select the most striking and memorable observations to illustrate their points, and take familiar instances from common life to which their readers can easily relate; they place opposite characters in a proper contrast—portraying the virtuous man as beautiful and the vicious man as ugly; and alluring us into following the paths of virtue by presenting the most rousing views of glory and happiness, which virtue is said to bring. They direct our steps in these noble paths by invoking the soundest precepts of common morality and citing the most illustrious examples of great deeds and incorruptible characters from history and literature. It is not by argument, then, that they inspire and direct us, but by images and examples: They make us feel the difference between vice and virtue; they excite and regulate our sentiments with lovely forms of expression, nudging us imperceptibly in one direction rather than another; and so, if they can but bend our hearts towards the love of probity and true honour, if they can make us want to be good, then they think, plausibly enough, that they have fully attained the end of all their labours and achieved what they set out to do.

The second style of doing moral philosophy regards humans primarily as rational beings, and aims to increase our understanding rather than to polish our behaviour. It seeks to identify the principles and causes that ground scientific, moral and aesthetic judgements. The method is inductive: We start out with particular observations about the way we think and act, and then work our way up to general principles that make sense of the particular observations. The second style is more difficult than the first, and will thus be less accessible to the general reader; its principal aim is not popularity but the discovery of truth.

2. But the improvement of character is not the only consideration in the science of man. The other species of philosophers consider man in another light: He is a creature of reason, they say, to be addressed as a reasonable rather than an active being, a thinker rather than a doer. They seek a general theory of man, and endeavour to formulate principles describing his cognitive powers—to create a map of his understanding and its faculties. Technical philosophers, as we might call them, aim more to understand man than to cultivate his manners. They accordingly regard human nature—our rational nature—as a subject of dispassionate speculation; and with a precise and narrow scrutiny examine it from every side, and every angle. They undertake this difficult study of human cognition in order to discover its workings, to find those principles or causes, which regulate our understanding, excite our sentiments, and make us approve or blame any particular object, action, or behaviour. Why do I admire honesty and deplore treachery? What leads me to believe in the external world? Technical philosophers want to know. They think it an embarrassment and reproach to all scientific literature, that philosophy should not yet have determined the mechanics of cognition, that it should not have fixed, beyond doubt or controversy, the foundations of moral judgements, of reasoning, and of criticism in the arts. Nothing is closer to us than our own thinking; and yet we do not understand it. And should we continue forever to discuss philosophical issues—to talk of truth and falsehood, of vice and virtue, of beauty and deformity—without grasping the principles behind such judgements, without being able to determine the source of these distinctions that we draw? Those who philosophize rigorously see this as an error. While they attempt to determine the principles of cognition, tackling this arduous task of mapping the human mind, many obstacles will get in their way. Yet they are deterred by no difficulties, trusting in the experimental method; natural philosophy is their model. Never resorting to poetry or eloquence, but proceeding from particular instances of judgement or sentiment and rising to general principles that contain them, they still push on their enquiries to reach principles more general than these. Like an astronomer or physicist they observe and record, and they rest not satisfied till they have arrived at those original, overarching principles, that explain everything. The highest principles are like limits by which, in every science, all human curiosity must be bounded—our explanations must stop at them. Though their speculations seem abstract, and even unintelligible to common readers—they’re not peppered with stories, and rousing examples—this is of little concern to the scientifically-minded thinker. Philosophers of this description are not looking for followers: they aim at the approbation of the learned and the agreement of the wise; the approval of the masses and the concurrence of the ignorant have no bearing in science. Technical philosophers rather think themselves sufficiently compensated for their efforts, well paid for the labour of their whole lives, if they can just discover some hidden truths about cognition, which may contribute in some small way to the instruction of posterity.

Technical philosophy has no tendency to inspire action or moral improvement, since it makes no reference to practical affairs and it relies on argument and analysis rather than emotion. Non-technical philosophy—the easy, literary kind—enjoys wider popularity and a reputation for comparative usefulness.

3. It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always be more popular than the alternative. With its rhapsodic style and moving depictions, it will, with the generality of mankind, have the preference above the accurate and abstruse; for an entertaining and inspiring discourse warms a man, while a probing and instructive one leaves him cold. Eloquence always triumphs over reason with the lazy and frivolous sort of person, and so the less formal and demanding style will be heartily embraced by many, will be strongly recommended by the masses, not only as more agreeable, but as more useful than the other. It enters more into the common concerns of daily life; the treatises on friendship and duty that we find in Cicero (106–43 BC) connect more readily with my own affairs than, say, the analysis of logical forms that we find in Aristotle (384–322 BC). Playing upon the imagination, popular writing moulds the heart and affections; and, by touching those principles which move or actuate men, by appealing to their feelings rather than their understanding, it reforms their conduct all the more effectively. For it is not arguments that stimulate men to action, but their desires and feelings. Reading a literary piece on moral philosophy thus brings them nearer to that model of perfection—the ideal character—which it describes: They will want to be as good as the individuals, the deeds and the virtues portrayed. On the contrary, the more technical, abstruse style of philosophy, requires one to adopt an outlook suitable only to the context of philosophical investigation itself. For theoretical enquiry, being founded on a purely speculative turn of mind, is something quite remote from practice, a useless instrument which cannot enter into everyday business and help us resolve practical questions pertaining to action. This academic frame of mind, then, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introductory Note
• Analytic Table of Contents
• Advertisement
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• Section 1: Of the Different Species of Philosophy
• Section 2: Of the Origin of Ideas
• Section 3: Of the Association of Ideas
• Section 4: Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding
• Section 5: Sceptical Solution of these Doubts
• Section 6: Of Probability
• Section 7: Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion
• Section 8: Of Liberty and Necessity
• Section 9: Of the Reason of Animals
• Section 10: Of Miracles
• Section 11: Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State
• Section 12: Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy
• List of Primary Sources Referred to in the Text
• Index